Month: August 2023

WALTHAM, Mass., August 3, 2023 /3BL/ – National Grid today announced that Lisa Wieland will join National Grid as President of its New England business, and sit on the Group Executive Committee, further strengthening National Grid’s leadership team and reinforcing its credentials as a leader in the energy transition. Lisa will report to National Grid CEO John Pettigrew. She joins the company in November.

Lisa joins from the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), the agency that runs Boston Logan International Airport, the Flynn Cruiseport Boston, Conley Terminal, Worcester Regional Airport, and Hanscom Field and oversees a commercial real estate portfolio. She joined Massport in 2006. In 2013, she was promoted to chief administrative officer for Maritime, and in 2015 became port director for the Port of Boston. In 2019, she was appointed CEO of Massport. The Authority generates an annual economic impact of nearly $22 billion across New England.

“Lisa’s experience working with government and community partners, and in large-scale infrastructure projects will bring real benefit to National Grid as we work to help Massachusetts achieve its net zero ambitions while delivering the safe and reliable flow of energy to our New England customers and communities. We welcome Lisa to National Grid and to our Group Executive,” Pettigrew said. “Our entire executive team is focused on helping deliver solutions that address the challenges associated with the energy transition and enhancing our vision of playing a leading role in the clean, fair and affordable energy future.”

Lisa will succeed Steve Woerner, who will continue to lead the New England business through 2023 having made the decision to leave National Grid at the end of the year.

“I would like to extend my personal thanks to Steve, who has made an important contribution to National Grid during his time as President of our New England business,” said Pettigrew. “He oversaw the approval for and successful separation of our Rhode Island business and has set the foundation for grid and electric sector modernization across Massachusetts. Steve will leave us at the end of the calendar year after a transitional period with Lisa, and he will go with our deep gratitude for his leadership and everything he’s achieved during his time with the company. We wish him the very best for the future.”

National Grid is committed to a clean, fair and affordable energy future. In Massachusetts, National Grid is enabling the Commonwealth’s energy transition and ambitious climate goals while ensuring the Governor’s priority of keeping Massachusetts competitive in every way.

Lisa has deep experience working with community stakeholders, customers, and government officials while leading large-scale critical infrastructure projects, including the revitalization of the Port of Boston. During her tenure, Massport undertook significant construction projects including the modernization of Terminal E for international flights, a new post-security terminal connection and roadways to link the airport’s busiest terminals, Terminals B and C, the dredging of Boston Harbor, and the modernization of Conley Container Terminal.

To support the Commonwealth’s economic development and climate goals, Lisa and the leadership team at Massport also launched an ambitious Net Zero plan and expanded the Massport Model, the organization’s diversity and inclusion initiative in commercial real estate that has become a model for development in the region.

Before joining Massport, Lisa worked as a consultant for Bain & Company in Boston and as an assignment editor for CNN in Los Angeles and Atlanta. She currently serves on the Boards of Boston Children’s Hospital, the American Red Cross of Massachusetts, and the New England Council.

About National Grid 

National Grid (NYSE: NGG) is an electricity, natural gas, and clean energy delivery company serving more than 20 million people through our networks in New York and Massachusetts. National Grid is focused on building a smarter, stronger, cleaner energy future — transforming our networks with more reliable and resilient energy solutions to meet state climate goals and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

For more information, please visit our website, follow us on Twitter, watch us on YouTube, like us on Facebook and find us on Instagram.

The picturesque village of Kanthalloor in Kerala, nestled amidst the mist-covered Western Ghats, is experiencing a remarkable shift in its agricultural landscape. This change has been made possible by the intervention of technology, with the recent launch of the Lenovo Digital Center for Kanthalloor Millets – a cutting-edge technological hub – that promises to change the lives of the farming community like never before.

Kanthalloor has always been known for its rich millet cultivation history, with as many as 18 varieties of millet grown here. However, these have dwindled to just two due to climate change and limited market access. To revive millet farming practices in this secluded community, Lenovo’s smarter technology is pivotal in improving accessibility, increasing awareness around the benefits of millet farming, and enhancing local farming knowledge and best practices. Market linkages are essential to transforming the millet food system into a profitable and sustainable model that supports rural livelihoods.

All this will be possible with the ‘Lenovo Digital Center for Kanthalloor Millets,’ which aims to provide farmers with essential information and best practices in millet farming.  The digital center setup includes a broad portfolio of devices by Lenovo such as ThinkPad, IdeaPad and Yoga laptops, Lenovo Yoga AIO 7 desktop PC Motorola Edge phones, and tablets, with access to solutions and services like Lenovo’s CO2 Offset Service and cloud solutions that will address the challenge of bridging the digital divide.

Lenovo’s digital center represents tech for good. It empowers farmers to enhance millet cultivation, embraces the nutritious “Sree Anna” grains, as termed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi paying homage to its Carnatic origin, and revitalizes its production, making it both scalable and sustainable. As the digital divide gradually diminishes in Kanthalloor, the impact of this technological intervention extends far beyond the confines of the village. It signifies a broader movement towards sustainable agriculture, fostering connections among rural communities and equipping them with the digital tools necessary to thrive in the modern world.

The setup of the digital center was the first step, following there were induction and training sessions for the farmers, led by volunteers. They were introduced to the digital realm of information that catered to their own curiosity about the farming practices such as bio-fertilizers required, climatic conditions favorable, and the best methods to employ for higher yields. They will soon be equipped with Motorola Edge mobile phones which enables them to stay in constant communication with the volunteers, who will be passing on real-time information.

The success story of the Lenovo Digital Center for Millets stands as a resounding testament to the extraordinary power of technology and its capacity to revolutionize farming practices. Through the remarkable Work For Humankind initiative, Lenovo has not only sparked a transformative shift in the lives of farmers but has also established an exceptional precedent for technology-driven solutions in tackling societal challenges head-on.

By Yan Tai

Earlier this month, the National League of Cities (NLC) and the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) teamed up to host an important and timely webcast titled, “Elevating Health across Sustainability Initiatives – Systematic Approach to Creating a Resilient Future.”

Bringing together three well recognized industry experts—Deb Cloutier, President & Founder of RE Tech Advisors; Wendy Feldman Block, Executive Managing Director at Savills US; and Jon Douglas, Director of Healthy Buildings Services and Solutions at Johnson Controls—the virtual event explored the emerging integrative approach to deploying solutions that ensure health and sustainability outcomes together.

The insightful discussion emphasized a holistic view of sustainability, one that delivers on health and maximizes, as Douglas said, “the synergy between healthy buildings and sustainability.”

NLC’s program manager for health and resilience Ayesha Mehrotra, who kicked off the event, helped set the stage with her opening remarks. “Among the many reasons it’s important to center health in conversations about sustainability is to ground our sustainability work at the human scale,” she said. That theme, a focus on people and their health and their well-being, resonated among the featured speakers throughout the session.

“Practitioners from different sectors are coalescing around a more comprehensive set of strategies and interventions to deliver on health, well-being and equity in everything from building projects to city planning, and from federal programs to environmental, social and governance (ESG) frameworks,” said Jason Hartke, IWBI’s executive vice president of policy and advocacy who moderated the discussion. “Cities are all too familiar with navigating these issues. They are always striving to optimize every investment, given limited budgets and limited capacity, so taking advantage of the synergies before us right now becomes an operating imperative.”

Click here to watch the full webcast. Below we highlight some of the main takeaways.

Heath is rising as a strong tailwind for sustainability initiatives

Since the pandemic, a few key drivers in real estate and infrastructure are catalyzing a paradigm shift to integrate health and equity in sustainability initiatives all around.

In commercial real estate, which is concurrently experiencing high interest rates and historically low occupancy rates, the market seems to be moving to “a flight to quality” dynamic where investments in health are prioritized, strategies such improving indoor air quality and water quality, and providing more access to natural light. “Commercial tenants are seeking out [healthy] building performance information but it’s not consistently available,” said Block, who described how the office tenant market has shifted into a place where healthy buildings are no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have as tenants strive to get employees into the office and use it as an important component in retention and recruitment

“Health and wellness is now a really easy one for folks to say ‘we want that,’” said Cloutier, echoing Block. “We’ve seen that as being a strong motivator in a really different way since we all went through the pandemic and the ways in which we’re finding our new norm.” She sees innovations and solutions pointing to acoustical health, access to daylight, green roofs, better air filtration, as well as efforts to further cultivate feelings of being safe and healthy in our spaces.

Generally, it was noted that data is playing an even more important role today in evaluating outcomes for sustainability initiatives. The same applies for efforts to incorporate health and well-being as part of more integrative approaches. Indoor air quality (IAQ) is a good example. The panel experts stressed that, as an example, energy efficiency and IAQ are not mutually exclusive goals. Industry data shows that smarter, well-running buildings can be healthy and sustainable at the same time.

“In the vast majority of projects, we can identify strategies which improve indoor air quality and at the same time reduce energy consumption. We need to get the word out that improving IAQ and reducing energy consumption are not mutually exclusive goals,” said Douglas.

Collaboration is key to systematic success

One key word the panelists all agreed upon is collaboration. “Partnership is leadership,” said Hartke. “It helps propel the movement forward and bridges health and environmental sustainability.”

A readily available example is the collaborative work between the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and IWBI to develop a new pathway to make it easier for building projects around the world to use LEED and WELL together, which was part of last year’s announcement by the two organizations to deepen its partnership.

Further, public and private sector partnerships pose additional opportunities in funding as well as creating efficiencies through streamlined, coordinated efforts. Hartke referenced the partnership between Johnson Controls and its many public sector clients, including schools and cities, that helps deliver a full set of solutions without upfront capital investment, ultimately helping accelerate the uptake of healthy, high-performance strategies in key sectors, such as schools, universities, municipalities and hospitals.

“Getting back to the synergy between healthy buildings and sustainability, we found that performing an air quality audit as part of a sustainability project is a good investment.” said Douglas. “The audits typically discover opportunities for both IAQ improvements and energy savings.”

Cloutier called attention to various resource hubs that are empowered by the public sector in the United States, but are actively leveraged by practitioners across all sectors. Such platforms that facilitate interactive and experience-sharing forums include the Energy Star program administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Better Buildings Initiative in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The Better Building Initiative, for example, has an online Solutions Center with a rich pool of resources, tools, and case studies that lay out best practices, help identify barriers and challenges and offer tips on how organizations are overcoming them.

“There is a really rich tapestry of our ecosystem between designers and architects and engineers, the occupants of the buildings or the communities at a city scale, and those that are providing the capital,” said Cloutier.

Recommendations: Integrate, not reinvent

In a final question to speakers, Hartke asked them what would be one recommendation they would make to either policymakers or to a chief sustainability officer of organizations. Here’s how they responded.

View original content here.